Consumers need information to compare alternatives for markets to function efficiently. Recognizing this, public policies often pair competition with easy access to comparative information. The implicit assumption is that comparison friction--the wedge between the availability of comparative...

Randomized controlled trials are increasingly used to evaluate policies. How can we make these experiments as useful as possible for policy purposes? We argue greater use should be made of experiments that identify the behavioral mechanisms that are central to clearly specified policy questions,...

We estimate the effect of neighborhood characteristics on the mortality of poor black male youth in families relocated through the Gautreaux Assisted Housing Program, a residential mobility program implemented in Chicago, USA in 1976. Within our sample (N = 2850), 52 post-placement deaths...

This study focuses on 540 households originally living in public housing in high-poverty areas of Boston who participated in HUD’s Moving To Opportunity (MTO) demonstration. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three groups: Experimental – offered mobility counseling and a Section 8...

We examine the effects of moving out of high-poverty neighborhoods on the outcomes of teenage youth, a population often seen as most at risk from the adverse effects of such neighborhoods. The randomized design of the Moving To Opportunity demonstration allows us to compare groups of youth,...

We analyze the effects of neighborhood characteristics on the mortality of black male youth in families relocated through the Gautreaux program, a residential mobility program implemented in Chicago in 1976. While we find significant evidence of neighborhood selfselection by families...

The Moving to Opportunity (MTO) demonstration assigned housing vouchers via random lottery to low-income public housing residents in five cities. We use the exogenous variation in residential locations generated by the MTO demonstration to estimate the effects of neighborhoods on youth crime and...

We examine long-term neighborhood effects on low-income families using data from the Moving to Opportunity (MTO) randomized housing-mobility experiment. This experiment offered to some public-housing families but not to others the chance to move to less-disadvantaged neighborhoods. We show that...

This paper examines the employment and earnings of people convicted of committing serious crimes, focusing on the effects of serving any time in prison and of the length of time served on long-term labor market outcomes. Regression analyses control directly for some of the most important factors...